White House, in Shift, Turns Against Syria Leader

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration, after weeks of urging Syria to carry out democratic reforms and end a brutal crackdown, has now turned decisively against President Bashar al-Assad, saying that he has lost legitimacy and that it has no interest in Mr. Assad keeping his grip on power.

President Obama, in an interview Tuesday with the “CBS Evening News,” stopped short of demanding that Mr. Assad step down. But administration officials said the president may take that step in coming days, as he did with Libya’s leader, Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, much earlier in that country’s popular uprising.

Mr. Obama’s comments, and even stronger ones by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton on Monday, showed that the administration has now concluded that Mr. Assad is no more willing or capable than Colonel Qaddafi of opening a dialogue with protesters or overseeing a political transformation.

The turning point in the administration’s public posture came after angry crowds attacked and vandalized the United States Embassy in Damascus, and the residence of Ambassador Robert Ford, after his visit to Hama, the hub of the current protests and site of a bloody crackdown by Mr. Assad’s father in 1982.

But administration officials said the shift has been weeks in the making, as Mr. Assad’s government has continued to harass and jail demonstrators, quash peaceful protests, and clamp down attempts to organize a political opposition. The crackdown has also begun to threaten regional stability with thousands of Syrian refugees fleeing across the northern border into Turkey.

“You’re seeing President Assad lose legitimacy in the eyes of his people,” Mr. Obama said to the CBS anchor, Scott Pelley. “He has missed opportunity after opportunity to present a genuine reform agenda. And that’s why we’ve been working at an international level to make sure we keep the pressure up.”

On Monday, Mrs. Clinton said, “If anyone, including President Assad, thinks the United States is secretly hoping that the regime will emerge from the turmoil to continue its brutality and repression, they are wrong. President Assad is not indispensable, and we have absolutely nothing invested in him remaining in power.”

Mrs. Clinton’s comments seemed calculated to answer critics who pointed to the striking difference in how the administration responded to Libya and Syria — and contended that it has acted too gingerly toward Mr. Assad, fearing that his downfall would destabilize other countries in its neighborhood.

Administration officials said they had no choice in Libya: Colonel Qaddafi is notoriously unpredictable, and had threatened to send his troops house-to-house in Benghazi, killing his opponents. In Syria’s case, there is no military remedy. NATO nations have no interest in acting in Syria, and there is no chance of a United Nations Security Council resolution equivalent to the one that NATO is enforcing in Libya. Russia has made clear it would reject any resolution condemning Mr. Assad.

Unlike Libya, Syria is a force in the region, one that the administration once thought could be drawn away from Iran’s orbit and play a part in an Israeli-Palestinian peace accord. Some critics, however, have always contended that it was naïve to assume that the Assad government could be a force for peace.

Still, until recently some American officials argued they were better off with Mr. Assad in power than with a power vacuum that could threaten the stability of Lebanon and security of Israel, and might be filled by Iran. But now that Mr. Assad “has shown definitively he has no interest in reform,” one senior official said, “the rationale for holding on to him has evaporated.”

The United States, officials said, is readying fresh sanctions against senior members of the Assad regime, and is weighing sanctions on Syria’s oil and gas industry. It is also watching a meeting of opposition groups set for this Saturday, which officials said could offer hope that the opposition — disorganized and lacking in leaders after decades of repression — is developing a viable transition plan.

Mr. Assad, officials cautioned, was far from being toppled. On any given day, they said, his government or the opposition holds the upper hand. But the upheaval has badly damaged Syria’s economy. For the first time, a senior official said, “the government has admitted that this is a crisis.”

“What led Washington, as well as the Turks and the Europeans to change their minds, was Assad’s complete lack of reliability,” said Andrew Tabler, an expert on Syria at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. “He promised not to use live fire against protesters, and the next day, he used live fire.”

While Mr. Tabler said the Assad regime was “degrading and disintegrating,” he added, “most people believe this is going to take a long time.”

Marshaling action against Syria’s oil and gas industry is complicated, Mr. Tabler said, because European and Canadian companies have investments there. The United States also has to worry about Arab neighbors like Saudi Arabia or Kuwait trying to throw Mr. Assad a financial lifeline in the name of regional stability.

The United States has tried to bring other forms of pressure to bear. It leaned on the International Atomic Energy Agency to refer to the United Nations a finding that the Syrian government sought to build a secret nuclear reactor, which was destroyed by Israel in a nighttime raid in September 2007. Mr. Assad has denied the facility had any nuclear use; the atomic energy agency concluded differently. The reactor was built, intelligence officials say, with secret aid from North Korea.

The mob attack on the United States Embassy and residence, as well as a similar assault on the French Embassy, brought a statement of condemnation from the United Nations Security Council. But the unanimity required of the 15 council members has proved harder to muster for any stronger action.

Administration officials said Mr. Ford’s visit to Hama, where he was met by welcoming crowds, showed the value of sending an envoy to Syria — something members of Congress have criticized. While the officials said they could not prove Mr. Ford’s presence there averted a violent assault by security forces, one said: “It’s very possible. A lot of people were expecting Hama to be very ugly.”

Neil MacFarquhar contributed reporting from New York.

A version of this article appears in print on July 13, 2011, on page A4 of the New York edition with the headline: White House, In Shift, Turns Against Syria Leader. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe